EELV Providers Want A Hand Out to Enter Crew Launching Biz

This is bad news for the advocates for commercial crew that are claiming it also covers the existing vehicles EELV launchers. I wonder what the impact will be on commercial crew if no entries using EELV respond to the RFP when it comes out.

That's an interesting take on the article. The headline should read:
EELV Providers See Obama Plan for the Farce it is.

Companies being greedy is kind of bad but it isn't news

Was this really a surprise to anyone? I'm sure there will be more cost increases and schedule delays to come.

"The grass is always greener..."

In Italy we had a similiar case with Alitalia. The left party governement in order to solve the problem of continuous losses, wanted to put it up for auction, but no one European carrier wanted to bid for it. So the following right party governement, after a couple of years, supported a large pool of private companies (about 16) willing to invest money under specific conditions of jobs and activities cutting and at the end it worked. Now Alitalia has counts in order. So I guess that Lockheed and Boeing, as they are already in a dominant position and supplier of NASA are not interested to change their position until new comers will start to be a threat to their business. This is the key point, if Falcon 9 and others will fly, the game has some chances to work, otherwise, it could take years and years until affluent people (the new market)will be willing to finance this business by flying to the ISS or similiar.

In many ways, what ULA's CEO is saying here isn't too much of a surprise. Just crew-rating the EELVs and adding crew boarding facilities at LC-39 and -41 is something that I have no doubt ULA have had costed for years. It really isn't a big deal and I think that they are more-or-less ready for it. However, building a pad for a bigger LV and maybe handling facilities for a more complex CV, something that may require facilities comparable to the shuttle era LC-39 in complexity, would be something else and a lot more expensive.

FWIW, I don't think that ULA would need to face the bigger costs in the short term. The money for upgrading KSC will likely be used for adding crew access to the EELV pads and the refurbishment of LC-39 is a decade away at the very least.

There could be many a dynamic in play in any competition for commercial crew services.

It's unlikely no one would bid, as pointed out by the previous commenter, but just as likely that the bid will be constrained more so by both parties (government/contractor) than ever previously.

The company that bids will say "this much will be spent on that" and "these services will be provided". The government will say, like with the Launch Services Program, and procurements for placing NASA satellites in orbit, the "requirements will be high level" and "outcome oriented", as will the payments.

The difficulty that an established player like ULA has with such a model is knowing when to say no, when the creeping of requirements from the government once a contract is started has actually been part of their business model for these enterprises. Once into a business, the next step is expanding revenue, and requirements creep on the part of the government has been an avenue to this for companies. New players, on the other hand, would just like access, a chance to get into the playing field.

Similarly, it will be difficult for many on the government side to accustom themselves to the way of doing business that has been the norm on the Launch Service Program side of the house. Especially when considering that caps in the civil servant workforce meaning that the current Launch Services Program can not simply absorb a new task like this, and be necessity the new players in the new "crew" counterpart office will have come from the traditional oversight and ownership of assets model (Shuttle).

This will prove an exercise in really defining goals, constrained by costs, and contracts, and on the contractor side, by negotiated prices, which is much more difficult than the previous cost-plus "I'm OK, your OK" approach to the government's access to space. We've been here before in a sense - since 1990 for NASA Launch Services (probes, satellites) - meeting with mixed success when measured in isolation for NASA. Lessons from this past experience should abound, from either the NASA, DoD or National perspective.

Last I looked ULA doesn't pay much for facilities, why should they pay for this? Nothing new, there are no "real" commercial solutions.

If things keep going like this Commercial Crew will end up being Dream Chaser on Ariane 5 and Dragon on Falcon 9.

It will be interesting to see Ariane 5 launch from the Cape :-)

I suspect that there will be a requirement for any commercial crew to launch from the U.S. or it would be too easy for some firm to just serve as an intermediary for Soyuz and bid for it. If I recall some firm tried that with the old Alt Access to ISS that was proposed years ago trying to sell NASA an upgraded version of the Progress vehicle for ISS resupply.

Double that number and its still a fraction of an "in house" gov't effort to develop and fly a new human rated LEO capability. Which last I saw had cost a total of $10 billion that had amounted to little more than lots of power point presentations.

Its all about demand! And space tourism has the potential to dramatically increase the demand for launches. But right now, only the super wealthy have the money to fly into space. And right now, there are no private people shuttles operating in the US. So the Russians currently have a monopoly on space tourism.

That's why the Federal government needs to continue to invest in the development of private commercial manned space vehicles.

And that's why I believe that the Federal government needs to also start a 'space lotto system' so that Americans and non-Americans can invest a dollar or two for a chance to fly on a private American space vehicle to private American space stations.

Marcel F. Williams

Theory 1: This is a trial balloon -- to see how much NASA shivers at the thought of a ULA no-bid.

Theory 2:
Of course nobody knows what the terms would/will be for (a) vehicle development, (b) government furnished equipment, facilities, and services, (c) requirements for flight system capability and safety, and (d) price and frequency of flights. Therefore, for the time being, ULA's participation is left vaguely undefined and its willingness to invest company funds is a "hell no." This is old-school aerospace speaking, not a venture capital startup.

"The grass is always greener..."

Exactly!

govt space people who've never worked in the commercial "industry" trenches seem to think "industry" does it better - "industry" records for recalls & defects & sw patches notwithstanding

and most every govt contractor shuttle worker in the trenches can probably tell ya about a time when some nitwit mgmt type that woulda cut corners doin somethin stupid, but NASA was there to prevent it (& vice versa)

Wow, I think a lot of folks need to update their thoughts on commercial. Commercial does not mean free subsidies of government. This is a quick road to bankruptcy. Like it or not space is still the realm of government funded support. European governments have invested $10B in Ariane 5 and bank role the bulk purchases of all Ariane 5 rockets. Soyuz, Progress, HIIB, etc. are all government owned. Elon is smart enough to understand this as demonstrated by the fact that 80% of SpaceX's development has been funded by NASA and the DoD.

Commercial human space flight means:
- NASA provides top level requirement
- NASA has insight and oversight
- Companies have clear responsibility for the actual design

The referenced $400m is an outstanding deal for NASA and the American tax payer. This provides NASA with a very reliable Atlas V rocket and launch infrastructure (less capsule) for launching NASA astronauts to orbit. Compare this to the $600m Ares I-X stunt, over $1B for ATK to develop the 5 segment SRB, over $3B in already spent Ares 1 cost through PDR, anticipated $10 to $20B to finish and qualify Ares 1. And at 10% the recurring cost of Ares I, Atlas will allow NASA to spend its money on what the nation does once we get to orbit as well as potentially stimulating alternate uses of space such as Bigelow's proposed space industrial complexes.

Appreciate your first hand feedback Space8. Sadly most of the folks here don't realize how much the "Commercial" side is subsidized, nor do they really care.